


Detour the Great Journey

by softly_speaking_valkyrie



Series: Femslash February 2019 [20]
Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms, Red vs. Blue
Genre: Action, Action/Adventure, Affection, Day 20, F/F, Femslas February 2019, Femslash, Femslash February, Fighting, Halo Wars, Halo Wars 2, Kissing, Love, Project Freelancer, Spartan Red Team, Strong Language, love and affection, red team - Freeform, relationship, southct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-02 01:39:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17878649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softly_speaking_valkyrie/pseuds/softly_speaking_valkyrie
Summary: Femslash February Day 20! After entering a Forerunner portal and ending up on a random planet well inside the Covenant Remnant Red Line, South and Connie stumble across the extremists attacking a human colony in a sight, not unlike Reach to South. In an attempt to assist the evacuation of the civilians, South and Connie make contact with the enigmatic sight that is the UNSC Spirit of Fire, and Spartan Red Team led by Jerome-092...





	Detour the Great Journey

**Author's Note:**

> I might make this into a small fic, let me know if you want more!

South trudged up the cliff, threading fingers between each other and cracking the joints of her hands and digits as she reached the top, Connie not that far behind her. Once they were both at the summit of the mount, they saw what had been lighting up their sensors like a fireworks display – The Covenant Remnant.

“Motherfucker,” Connie cursed harshly as she pulled off the heavy box that was her E.O.D helmet. South pulled off her Mark-VI helmet and brushed her full fringe of blonde and magenta-tipped hair to the side as she looked at the battlefield with her own eyes.

It wasn’t just a battlefield, it was a city, and the fires from the buildings were rising higher and higher by the second as the Remnant Carrier loomed overhead. But it was Connie who spotted the UNSC ship beginning to move alongside it and engage with deck cannons. Pelicans were zipping all around the city like flying seeds falling from a tree and both ex-Freelancers took in every detail. South cowled herself again in her Mark-VI helmet and enabled her binoculars to read the callsign of the ship now engaging the Covenant Carrier.

“The UNSC Spirit of Fire, declared lost with all hands in 2534, what the hell is it doing here?” South asked Connie next to her.

The brown-armoured ex-Freelancer also had no idea how the repurposed Phoenix-Class was there, nor how it was managing to launch a stable defence of the city as Pelicans all scuttled to response areas. As she brown-armoured woman put on her E.O.D helmet again, she zoomed in on the inner workings of the city, seeing the groups of Elites, Brutes, Grunts, Jackals and Hunters begin to terrorise the population and subjugate them.

“Where did you say that Forerunner portal dropped us again?” She asked South.

“No idea... But there’s Covenant here, we must be well beyond the red line,” she answered with a little concern in her voice. Pulling the assault rifle from on her back she handed it to Connie and grabbed her own hand cannon from at her hip. “I hope ya didn’t forget how to fight the aliens, honey,” she teased, smiling under her helmet as she began to tune her radio. That was always the first protocol when stumbling onto a battlefield where civilians were involved – get your radio tuned and see where the signals of distress were coming from so you could answer. South and her brother North (before he died too) were on Reach for a short duration and knew that things with the Covenant could get nasty very, very quickly. Connie hadn’t seen really any action against the aliens, except in the defence of New Mombasa before Lord Hood had issued the general retreat.

Connie nodded as she took the assault rifle and pulled out her own pistol – lately she’d been dual-wielding in the more urban environments they’d been finding themselves in whilst on the run from the authorities, remnants of Project Freelancer and anyone else that wanted to find and kill them.

“Aliens, Freelancers, let them try to land a fucking finger on me, baby,” Connie told her girlfriend, loading a fresh magazine into her rifle with the few fingers not clutching the trigger of her silenced pistol.

South tuned the radio to what frequency was getting the most chatter. So many of the standard UNSC operating frequencies were memorised thanks to the Freelancer training, even the older operating languages were known to her. She tried them all and finally found one with the military talk on it.

“Are you receiving me? This is callsign South Dakota, over. If there’s anyone on this frequency, please respond, we’re here to offer aid in the evacuation efforts,” South explained into her helmet radio as she and Connie descended into the outskirts of the city and pushed inside the skyline as quietly as possible.

“...Douglas on your six!” Called out from the radio as they got closer inside the city, explosions ringing out around every corner and the sound of anti-air fire trailblazing into the sky as Remnant Banshees, Vampires and Spirit transports soared overhead.

“No copy, could you repeat? This is callsign South Dakota, do you read me?” South tried again and the ground shuddered. She and Connie were thrown against the side of the building they were hugging as the whole skyline heaved and juddered sideways.

“Fuck!” Connie cursed again as she looked up and to the left, seeing the top half of a massive skyscraper split off from its other half and fall against the rest of the towers. It made the whole city shudder all around them. “They’re losing this fucking fight. South we should just blow this off,” she told her lover as they shook themselves and tried to press on.

South grabbed her lover’s forearm and stopped her. “That’s Freelancer Connecticut talking. Get your head outta your ass, Connie. And get that rifle ready,” she ordered her girlfriend as she put her fingers to the side of her helmet again. “I repeat; callsign South Dakota, does anybody read me?”

The man’s voice returned to her ears. “Roger! This is Jerome-092, Red Team. Identify with rank,” he responded to South, making her neck hairs stand on end in a feeling of both dread and concern.

Connie stood still in her tracks and faced her masked lover. “Spartans? What the fuck? I think Sierra-117 was the last and he’s MIA? What the fuck is going on here?!” She screamed at South before taking another step. Her body language told South she was out, about to bolt and leave all the civilians and the Spirit of Fire to their doom at the hands of the renegade Carrier and air force of the radical Elites.

“We’re, uh... We’re former Freelancers. We have no rank, Commander. We’re in the area and you look like you need the help,” South told Jerome without even looking at Connie, who had her helmet off again and was ready to punt her girlfriend in the gut for not answering her. She was the one who traditionally wore the pants, and now she was ready to snap.

“South!” She screamed at her.

There was silence, for seconds, but after three there was an explosion of sound – plasma coming from a balcony directly above them. The Elites had found them from the sound of the Sangheili they were speaking as they hailed rounds from their Plasma and Storm Rifles up above.

Connie and South forward rolled underneath them, pulling arms out again and firing up at the balcony for an incomplete shot. Nothing was getting hit from this angle and neither woman wanted to dart back to eye the aliens. “Callsign South Dakota this is Jerome-092. We’re unfamiliar with the Freelancers. If you really want to help we’re at Fourth and Maine, repeat; Fourth and Maine. Awaiting assistance, but we can’t hold out forever. Over!” Jerome was shouting to South’s radio over the torrent of bullet and plasma-fire.

“Solid copy, Jerome!” South answered back, unsure if he could hear her as she leaned out of the cover to fire a couple of rounds at the Elites.

“Don’t you dare ignore me, South!” Connie was barking at her as she ducked and weaved around plasma coming at them both.

“I’m not! But we have to help these people!” She shouted back, reaching for the non-existent grenades at her belt. On Reach, she would have had them.

“If we help these Spartans, we might as well as hand ourselves back to ONI now with a fucking ribbon around us saying ‘To Doctor Halsey with Love from Director Church’!” Connie screamed, her anger rising to a palpable odour on her as she leapt out of cover and fired a barrage of bullets into the Elites up top.

The rounds found their marks in the necks of the aliens and the blue-armoured Elites fell forward and to the floor, breaking bones under the flesh. South made a pout before she kicked up her helmet into her grasp, covering her face again. She was proud of herself and her combat ability but her anger at South for so freely offering them both up to unfamiliar Spartans in the middle of a warzone. “I’m not dropping this, South,” she told her lover, iron-clad.

South sighed, her limbs going limp in futile yet mild annoyance. “You heard the Spartan? They don’t know about Project Freelancer!” The blonde told her girlfriend. Connie didn’t believe her or the Spartans but didn’t want to let South walk into a trap or let her come to harm. She’d stay with her, she decided.

“Come on, before more alien bastards find and try to kill us. Fuck if I knew they were this bad at shooting I would have just joined the UNSC instead of ONI in the first place. Come on, let’s find Jerome,” she gestured, taking point as they moved to the beacon now pinging on their scanners.

 

***

 

Jerome charged his Spartan Laser, blasting a hole in another Hunter’s back and splitting its body in two as Alice leapt from the upper level of a shopping veranda with her knife in the neck of another Elite. Douglas snapped around as a team of Grunts with primed plasma grenades snuck up on Jerome, blasting them with one tube of his rocket launcher and then pulling out his pistol to rapidly drop the shields of their commanding Elite. Jerome took the sounds like an alarm to him being flanked and dropped the laser for the two SMGs at his thighs, barraging the shieldless Elite with bullets and splattering luminous violet blood all over the storefront and the floor. The Elite dropped, lifeless, to the floor with a flutter of Sangheili last words.

“Fall in!” Jerome ordered the rest of Red Team.

“Shields are down but I’m standing, and we’ve got more falling in on this position,” Alice reported to her team leader as she stood and grabbing the handle and grip of her chain gun.

Douglas stood up too and knocked the spent rocket tube from his launcher and looked around the floor for a spare – there were none. “I’m out of rockets. We’re running low on clips too, Jerome,” he informed his brother Spartan as they all convened in the middle of the lower veranda. The bodies of countless Elites, Grunts, Jackals and Hunters all scattered around them began to smell.

“Clips are things civvies put in their hair – this is called a magazine,” Connie shouted to the Spartans from above the garden as she and South dropped in on them, the brown-armoured former Freelancer tossing Douglas a spare magazine for his assault rifle.

South moved directly to Jerome, seeing the numbers ‘092’ on one of his Mark-V shoulder plates. “Jerome-092? Former Agents South Dakota and Connecticut, Freelancers,” she introduced, offering a hand for the much taller Jerome to take. To the naked eye, their armour looked the same – the Freelancers were made to look like Spartans, but as Jerome shook South’s hand with a mighty firm grip, she could tell the difference in the alloys and undercoating that made their mantles. The Mark-V Spartan II armour, even this outdated, felt like it was made out of pure diamond and as tough as nails. Jerome felt like a machine to the touch and South felt more than intimidated.

“What’s the situation, Sir?” South asked, knowing to use the correct protocol in the presence of Spartans.

Alice came to her back and rested another mechanical-like Spartan II hand on South’s shoulder. “Easy there, South Dakota. No need for protocol around us,” the female Spartan told her. Douglas was laughing while standing next to Connie.

“We might look Spartan, but we lost our place in the UNSC a long time ago,” he called out to South.

Both former Freelancers looked more than confused as they checked each of the Spartans. Certainly, they weren’t normal soldiers at all, judging by the withering on their Mark-V armour and the look of the Spirit of Fire in the skies. 

“The Radicals are all over the city and we need to get to evac now, you two are welcome to come along, just do your best to keep up, okay?” Jerome told both the women with a consoling and gentler voice than before. He was slightly soothing, a calm man and with convincing and charismatic demeanour. South could tell by the inflexion of his voice that he and his Spartans had been through the blender in their time.

“Do you guys have enough ammo to make it to evac?” Connie asked, coming forward and reloading her own rifle. She looked at Alice with her chain gun.

“We’re Spartans, honey. When we run out of ammo, we just start punching shit,” Alice told her straight, hoisting up her chain gun and moving toward the exit with Douglas as he brandished his dual SMGs and stacked up ready to move out. Jerome waited as he handed a fragmentation grenade each to South and Connie.

“Try to keep up,” he told them both before moving on with his team.

South wanted to move immediately, but Connie tugged on the back of her armour, spinning the bleach-blonde around to see she had her helmet off again. Connie pulled off her lover’s helmet and pulled her face in for a heated and passionate kiss. It was a little scared in its intent, South could tell as she reached for and cupped Connie’s cheek.

“Don’t die, babes,” Connie asked.

“Not on your life. You just make sure you keep up,” South teased, pecking her lover’s lips again before they moved out with the mysterious Spartans...


End file.
